Tony Thurmond, CLA ’93, California state superintendent of public instruction, is on a mission to achieve something that has not been done in California’s history: become the state’s first Black and Afro-Latino governor. 

Thurmond was recently in the Northeast as he visited Washington, D.C., to attend a conference focused on expanding funding that will help homeless students in the country. Before heading back west, he took a quick detour, stopping to visit his alma mater, Temple University, where he met with President Richard M. Englert. Thurmond was happy to hear about Temple’s new Temple Promise program that covers costs for admitted students with high financial need.   

“My entire career has been focused on helping students from low-income and disadvantaged backgrounds, so I love that Temple has created a program that makes a college education more accessible and affordable,” Thurmond said.   

“When I was going through the most difficult circumstances, living in Philadelphia helped me find my voice. I found my purpose at Temple that inspired my future and the change I could achieve.”  

Thurmond has called public education “the great equalizer,” and it has proven to be just that throughout his life. Thurmond did not come from money, power or influence. He struggled as a child, growing up in poverty in San Jose, California, as the son of a Black man and a Panamanian immigrant woman.   

His mother, Cecilia, a classroom teacher, instilled in him the importance of education and how it creates opportunity. That message resonated with Thurmond and stayed with him his entire life, even though he was only 6 years old when his mother died of cancer, and his father, a soldier in the U.S. military, did not return to his family after the Vietnam War.  

He has since forged a successful political career, becoming a state legislator and serving his community’s local school board, city council, the California State Assembly and then running the largest public education system in America.   

Cousin’s doorstep in Philadelphia   

After their mother’s death, Thurmond and his brother were dropped off at their cousin’s doorstep in Philadelphia. It was their first time ever meeting her.   

Thurmond had to grow up in a hurry. He watched his cousin struggle working multiple jobs as a nursing assistant and campus security officer to make ends meet. He had to take care of his younger brother and cousin’s adopted daughter, who he considers a sister, when she was not around.  

“We relied on food stamps, government cheese and other public assistance, yet she raised us as her own children,” he said about his cousin, Diana Krajewski, who adopted him. “She saved my life.”  

“She modeled education as the way out of poverty,” he added. “While she was at work or taking night classes to support our family, I cared for my brother and sister, including cooking for them.”  

By age 18, Thurmond attended a picket line with Krajewski during a labor strike. It was a pivotal moment for him, and he found himself drawn to the strikers’ cause; he felt destined to have a career serving the needs of his communities. Thurmond’s cousin Diana and her husband Donald Krajewski both worked their way up to campus police officers at Temple, which allowed Thurmond to attend the university through tuition remission offered to full-time employees.  

At Temple, he juggled multiple jobs to make ends meet. He loaded UPS trucks and took on night shifts at McDonald’s, earning $3.35 an hour. He did this all while remaining engaged in campus life, serving as vice president of Temple Student Government in his second year of college. The following year he was elected student body president of Temple, inspiring him to pursue a political career. 

“We were lobbying for more student funding in the country and passed a resolution that Temple divest its holdings from the South African government at the time when Black South Africans would be denied the right to vote. 

“Seeing those actions made me realize how powerful politics can be in changing the world for the better,” he added. “My experiences as a student inspired me to pursue a career in government, which I want to give the credit to Temple.” 

Thurmond would receive a psychology degree from Temple’s College of Liberal Arts.  

Career in social work  

After Temple, he entered a career as a social worker, working with children who had experienced neglect or abuse in Philadelphia. Thurmond received his first taste of working in a large education organization through the National School and Community Core, which helped students who needed after-school programs throughout the Philadelphia school system and other schools in Delaware, New York City and New Jersey.  

He witnessed many families dealing with systemic issues of poverty, substance abuse and lack of access to quality education for their children. Eager to learn how he might help change the system for the better, Thurmond went back to school, where he received both a master’s degree in social work and a master of law and social policy at Bryn Mawr College.  

He relocated back to California, settling in Richmond, where he worked in a nonprofit serving young adults transitioning out of foster care with challenges.  

“Can you imagine being 18 years old and being in foster care your entire life just to be kicked out,” he said. “You don’t have any more family; your belongings are put in trash bags and you have nowhere to live.”   

Looking for a solution, in the fall of 2005, Thurmond took on the role of executive director of Beyond Emancipation, a social service agency in Alameda County, California, where he launched the nonprofit’s first transitional housing program to help young adults leaving foster care find subsidized housing, receive an education, work toward a career and get training on how to live independently.  

He later took a Marin County manager position at the Golden Gate Regional Center, providing services to individuals with developmental disabilities, after getting elected and serving on the Richmond City Council for nearly three years. Thurmond also orchestrated a plan to keep schools open during the 2008 recession when serving as a school board member at the West Contra Costa Unified School District. Under his tenure, the school board renovated dozens of schools, producing state-of-the-art student learning facilities.  

“I never stopped being a social worker. It took me to different careers from helping people with developmental disabilities or overseeing after-school programs and mentoring programs,” he said. “I worked with kids in the juvenile justice system to help give them a second chance to get back on track and not reoffend.”   

Within two years, Thurmond settled into a position as senior director of community and government relations at the Lincoln Child Center in Oakland. He oversaw truancy prevention, parenting education, school-based mental health services, and support services for foster/kinship youth and families. His social service work improved service provision to foster youth and he led educational initiatives that offered job training to at-risk youth in the eastern region of the San Francisco Bay Area.  

Thurmond leaps into a political career  

After years of social work, Thurmond decided to serve his community on a higher level and made the leap to a political career after he was elected to the California State Assembly in 2014. Within his first year, he had the rare honor of authoring a bill, which restored almost a billion dollars in funding for services for people with developmental disabilities that had been cut while he was still working at the Golden Gate Regional Center.   

 His career had come full circle. 

“When I was in social work school, there weren’t a lot of politicians with social work backgrounds,” he said. “Since being elected, it is an exciting feeling to know my social work practices have been used in politics to make an impactful change for families in need.”  

He further developed mental health initiatives in schools, one of which addressed the problem of truancy. The initiative proved successful, improving youth attendance rates and putting them on a more positive trajectory in life.  

“What I did in the legislature became a reflection of what I did in social work; working on legislation to expand funding for foster youth and people with developmental disabilities and youth, in general, led me to run for California state superintendent,” he added.  

Thurmond was elected the 28th California state superintendent of public instruction in 2018. He had a pivotal moment securing a historic $4.13 billion investment in community school strategies to ensure an equity-driven approach to public education. To address systemic and institutional racism of Black students in California, he launched the Black Student Achievement Taskforce, a statewide task force designed to improve the success of Black students.  

He has also worked to improve student mental health by expanding access to resources and establishing the pipeline of student-serving clinicians by creating $20,000 grants for 10,000 school counselors via the Golden State Grant Program.  

Determined to bridge the digital divide in California, Thurmond sponsored legislation that secured $7 billion to expand access to low-cost internet to thousands of families and coordinate the distribution of more than one million devices to low-income households across the state. He also secured hundreds of millions of dollars to implement the nation’s first statewide Universal Meals Program in the 2022–2023 school year.  

The future  

On Sept. 23, 2023, Thurmond announced his bid for governor of California in 2026 with a video on his X (formerly Twitter) account. Within two days of launching his campaign, the video received more than 300,000 views and within a few months, his campaign was endorsed by more than 250 elected officials, eclipsing the number of endorsements for any other campaign.   

Some of his priorities include increased wages, more housing with affordable rent, fully funded public schools, and addressing crime and safety in the communities. He also plans to build 2.2 million units of affordable housing for teachers and classified staff who cannot afford to live where they work.  

Thurmond explains, if elected, why he is ready to take a giant leap in his political career as a state governor to build a brighter future for the people of California.  

“I overcame losing my parents, growing up in poverty in a working-class neighborhood like West Oak Lane in Philadelphia,” he said. “Then coming to California, continuing on the traditions of being the son of immigrants and the descendants of slaves, I feel like my experience mirrors the experience of people in our country and our state. 

“I intend to use my ability to overcome difficult circumstances to help the people of California,” he added. “I've never felt more aligned with the mission of serving the people than I do now and I'm excited about the possibilities of the future.”